Standards and protocols for advertising pitch process in Nigeria will soon be introduced by Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria ARCON, Lekan Fadolapo, the director General of the council has said.
When introduced, he said ARCON will set the rejection pitch process at minimum of N1m. Fadolapo said this last Sunday when he discussed ‘’the role of advertising in the Nigerian economy’’ during the discourse with Ken on Classic FM.
Read also: ADVAN picks hole in law mandating ARCON to set up tribunal
He said before now the pitch process has been on auto-run to the extent it is like an animal kingdom, fighting and biting. “We therefore need to set standards and protocols for that process to ensure sanity”
“You can’t wake up as a brand manager and decide to call many agencies that spend huge resources for a pitch. What we want to do is that if you want to call for a pitch, you should first call for profile pitch, meaning that the agencies will send in what they have done and their profile. After the profile pitch, you can invite them for meet and greet or do a facility tour which will allow the clients to assess the agencies further.
“After the second process, you can call for a creative or strategy pitch and the client must be ready to pay a pitch rejection fee of N1m for every agency that appeared for the pitch.
“If you invite five agencies and finally chooses one, the remaining four agencies must be paid pitch rejection fee of minimum of N1m each”, he said.
He said the council has also introduced disengagement protocols in the industry which involves how a client disengages its agency.
“You can fire your agency but there must be a procedure which must involve reconciliation of financial transactions. If you do reconciliation you must put a conclusion or a closure to the financial transactions because we must be able to track who owes who. If you fire your agency without these conclusions and you engage another agency, we will come after the agency. He said with these reforms, sanity is coming on board.
ARCON director also defended various reforms introduced in the industry in the recent time including the 45 days contract payment threshold and use of local content as part of efforts of ensuring sanity in the industry and growing the economy.
“What we do as a regulator is not to our own benefit, if we have stability in the Nigerian advertising industry, it has a multiplier effect in the entire economy”, he said.
Read also: Advertising Reforms: ARCON mandates agencies to document employed foreigners
He said advertising is a regulated industry aguing that though all professions across the world have their challenges, but maintained that advertising is a legalised profession.
Advertising business is a regulated industry and before you can set up an advertising agency, you are to be licensed by ARCON with a set standard to be met.
